Johns Hopkins University – Homewood Campus – (410-516-5250/office phone)
Thursday, December 8, 2005 - 3:30 p.m.
Psychology Department/Temple University
Infant Lab at Ambler
“What Do We Mean When We Say Modularity?”
Fodor and others ushered in attention to modules 25 or more years ago. Since then, the field of cognitive development has carved itself into almost non-overlapping areas. Some of us study number, some study space, some study language, and so on. In addition, modularity has become a key issue in the nativist-empiricist debate. However, we still lack a completely clear sense of what we mean by a module. The purpose of this talk is to reflect on the meta-theory surrounding questions of cognitive modularity and development. Central illustrations will involve research on the geometric module but other modularity claims will also be discussed.